As life progresses, we all can find acceptance

Acts to live by

Huston's book offers a 10-point approach on how to think about the classic obstacles associated with aging.

One must:

Listen. To hear God, or the universe perhaps.

Delight. Embrace life beyond the personal.

Lighten. "Our first duty is to love nothing here."

Settle. "To put down roots in whatever soil lies beneath us."

Confront ... "ourselves and ... the people we most love" while we can.

Accept. "We must 'keep our bags packed,' in that we are always prepared to make the journey out of this earthly existence."

Appreciate. This life. Other people. God's blessings. Goodness. Grace. The man who pumped our gas.

Befriend. The deep human need to be included, to find a home among caring neighbors, and to know you can turn to others for help.

Generate wisdom and curiosity in younger generations by teaching.

Blessing. Be one to others.

And then departing, which is inevitable, but not, writes Huston, without its considerable grace.

Paula Huston's mother died of metastatic liver cancer a few months ago at the age of 85. At one point, the elderly woman looked her 61-year-old daughter in the eye and "declared with perfect confidence that some people" – she was talking about Paula – "were going to be mighty surprised when she didn't die as soon as they thought she was going to. In fact, she was maybe not going to be dying at all."

She died a week later.

Huston, an accomplished writer on spirituality, is certain her mother was not afraid to die; "she didn't want to yet."

In her latest book, "A Season of Mystery: 10 Spiritual Practices for Embracing A Happier Second Half of Life," Huston is unafraid to confront the hardest task that those who are aged 50 to 70 face. That is, "to help our friends and relatives go through the process of aging and preparing for death."

Huston is a wife, mother and grandmother; and a caregiver for parents-in-law who lives on hard-won yet productive acreage in central California. A Catholic oblate who writes from her heart, but also from her firm religious beliefs and background, she can and will quote the Bible, Jesus, known saints, unknown saints, apostles, abbesses, hermits and medieval mystics freely. But she knows a good story about her elderly neighbor or her 2-year-old granddaughter or her own Minnesota uncle serves as well to tell the truth about this stuff, too.

Her Uncle Lowell was a farmer who held together the family farm when everybody else left. Then, in his late-80s, he managed to ignore a heart attack for three weeks. When he finally got the help he needed, he demanded to go back to the farm. There, he fell and almost died.

What was the family to do? No one wanted him to drive. No one wanted to tell him he couldn't go back to the farm. Then, at a wedding dinner a few months later, he began to choke. Huston came to his rescue. A day later, she realized he needed help zipping his pants.

When Huston speaks about acceptance as one of the 10 disciplines to use in old age, she is talking about her own, in accepting that this is what is happening to her uncle. And, of course, what will eventually happen in her own life.

She says it is important for this generation to talk about our long-term aging because it's a relatively new problem. Her next-door neighbor, Pat, is almost 91. Last year, Paula asked if Pat knew her great-grandparents.

" 'Oh,' she said, 'we didn't even know our grandparents. They died in their early 60s.' It kind of hit me," says Huston. "This is a brand new deal. Parents of people my age are still in pretty good shape and none of them live in the same house as us. Others are trying to care for people seven states away. Some have relatives in assisted living situations. The menu is varied and complicated."

It was Huston's editor who suggested that she could survey the spiritual landscape of this different phase of life. Huston sees the process as enlightening.

"We can't hold onto our illusions any longer. We must negotiate these passages."

What's the process, then?

"I just bring it up," she says. "I ask them if they are afraid and, you know what, they aren't. Not to die. They might not want to go through a procedure so you explain it better. What they're afraid of is losing their physical powers. It's their loss of derring-do, their lack of choice. It leads to some interesting discussions of a spiritual nature."

It also leads to an imagining of ourselves in the other's situation. "Deep down," she says, "what we really need in this perilous stage of life when we are constantly facing different kinds of loss, is genuine friendship."

Those discussions are ongoing with Uncle Lowell, who will have his 90th birthday in November. Huston says he has acknowledged that he will not likely live on the farm again. But he is not pretending to be happy about that.

But do not fret. He is well taken care of by people who love him dearly.

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